Serial Killers Among Us

I ran across this blog post in defense of the world’s most controversial punctuation mark, and had to share it with you. The post was originally featured on The Writer.

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Less than one-third of a second. Can you comprehend that length of time? One-third of a second is a tad less than the time it takes to say the word one or two or three, in “one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand.” Miniscule, Lilliputian, infinitesimal is what it is. It’s also the teensy length of time it takes the average person to type a comma.

Even if you can’t imagine less than one-third of a second, here’s something I’ll bet you can comprehend: $10,000,000. In O’Connor v. Oakhurst – a riveting case for grammar police across the globe – milk truck drivers sued their employer for overtime pay because a missing serial comma in state law failed to include their delivery duties in a series of jobs that are exempt from overtime. It’s an unimpeachable truth that the owners of Oakhurst Dairy in Portland, Maine, sure wish the lawmakers who penned the state’s overtime law had spent less than one-third of a second typing an Oxford comma so that the dairy wouldn’t have to shell out $10 million to its delivery drivers. Oopsies.

Maine’s overtime law states that any hours worked beyond 40 must be compensated at 1.5 times the normal rate of pay. With exceptions. According to the law, the following jobs do not qualify for overtime pay: “The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of” perishables and two other specific categories of food. In the long series of activities that are exempt from overtime pay, there is no comma before that final conjunction linking the last two items. That’s right. No serial comma.

Oakhurst’s truck drivers distribute dairy products all the live-long day. The dairy’s attorneys argued that “distribution of perishable foods” falls under the exemption. But, because there is no Oxford comma before or – you know, to avoid ambiguity – the last two items could be either “packing for shipment” and “distribution” or “packing for shipment” and “packing for distribution.” Had there been a serial comma, the law would unambiguously state that workers “packing [perishable foods] for shipment” and workers who handle “the distribution of [perishable foods]” are not entitled to overtime pay. Sorry, moo-juice distributors.

Unfortunately for Oakhurst, Circuit Judge David Barron sided with the dairy truck drivers. “For want of a comma,” he wrote, “we have this case.” In 29 methodically explained pages, the judge concluded that because Maine requires a liberal reading of the law when there is ambiguity, “distribution of” is not a stand-alone activity. So, because the truck drivers do not “pack for distribution” of perishables, they deserve the years and years of overtime pay for which they were not exempt.

Finally! A legal decision that supports the inclusion of the Oxford comma, or as I like to call it, I was right all along. Grammar rules do too matter, so shut up. No, you!

O’Connor v. Oakhurst, of course, isn’t the only battle over the inclusion of the Oxford comma, a.k.a. the serial comma. The “serial killers” (mostly newspapers) and the Oxford-advocates (everybody else) get into fierce internet skirmishes, with both sides flinging insults, expletives, and vitriol because they cannot reach an agreement. Oxford proponents insist that including the serial comma helps writers avoid ambiguity, makes lists easier to comprehend, and corresponds to the natural pause that speakers make before the final item. Anti-Oxfords’ arguments for omitting the serial comma are stupid the economy of printing space, the avoidance of redundancy, and the fact that sometimes that final comma causesambiguity, blah, blah, bladdity blah.

Look. We can dissect the pros and cons for time eternal. (See “A breakdown of arguments in the Oxford comma debate.”) But it won’t change the truth: The Oxford comma is not only a necessary punctuation mark, it just takes so little effort that I can’t believe folks still argue about including it. Less than one-third of a second. What in the Sam Hill are you people doing that you can’t even spare one-third of a second? If you refuse to use a serial comma, and it ends up costing you millions and millions of dollars, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Because that was your warning. Right there.

One Comment

Amazing – who would have thought that legalities could be argued over a misplaced or not used comma. But it is an indirect way to let us know as authors how important it is to use proper grammar and proofread everything 2-3 and more times.